Hardis Group Exceeds Customer Expectations and Attached SLAs with Opengear

Highlights

• The Hardis Group is a French company with offices across Europe specializing in service digitization, IT transformation, and IT consulting, as well as logistics and warehouse supply-chain management software.
• Recognizing the potential benefits of cloud-based services, Hardis Group decided to offer Software as a Service (SaaS) in addition to their on-premises software solution. However, the networking team at Hardis realized that cloud-based solutions pose new constraints on network infrastructure.
• The Network Resilience Platform Opengear provided has significantly enhanced the quality of Hardis Group’s infrastructure. Following the modernization of their network and the implementation of an out-of-band solution, the team can mitigate any unplanned outages faster, meet their SLAs, and most importantly, help customers keep their businesses running smoothly.

Customer Story

The Hardis Group is a French company with offices across Europe specializing in service digitization, IT transformation, and IT consulting, as well as logistics and warehouse supply-chain management software.

Over the past two decades, Hardis Group has grown through innovation and investment in new technologies and businesses. Since 2003, the company has completed six acquisitions and expanded its services to help customers transform their businesses by delivering value through cloud, AI, and automation technologies. To stay competitive and innovate, they started offering cloud-based solutions and re-engineered their networking infrastructure to match this shift.

Currently, the Hardis Group has 1,500 employees, seven offices, and two data centers. They help clients accelerate commerce, supply chain, and information-system transformations.

Challenge

The Hardis Group recognized the potential benefits of cloud-based services and decided to offer Software as a Service (SaaS) in addition to their on-premises software solution. The company made this decision in order to remain competitive and meet the growing demand for cloud-based solutions. However, the networking team at Hardis realized that cloud-based solutions pose new constraints on network infrastructure.

To provide a SaaS solution, the customer-facing consulting team required an agile and easy-to-manage infrastructure that meets high-security standards. The team also knew that they needed to address any scalability issues that may arise with the addition of new customers and the need to manually manage them.

The solution to these challenges was a software-defined controller to ensure security, flexibility, and scalability. This approach required an out-of-band network to ensure that any physical loop in the on-the-switch infrastructure would not result in loss of connectivity to a data center.

“For our retailer customers, around holidays, if we interrupt their warehouse, it is catastrophic. They can lose millions of EUR if we interrupt warehouse production.”

Solution

According to Rémi Roman, the network engineer for the Cloud Operations Group at Hardis, “an out-of-band network was mandatory in the new modernized architecture, as any outage directly impacted customers and resulted in an immediate loss of business, especially for retail customers.”
Noted Roman, “For our retailer customers, around Christmas, if we interrupt their warehouse, it is catastrophic. They can lose millions of EUR if we interrupt warehouse production.”

The Hardis team decided to redesign their network for SaaS-based product transitions and opted to implement software-controlled switches and an out-of-band network.

To evaluate out-of-band solutions from several vendors in the market, the team considered factors such as reliability, ease of deployment, and functionality. Ultimately, they chose Opengear based on these criteria. The team then implemented Opengear’s Operations Management products in their Venissieux and Limonest data centers in France.

Specifically, they deployed the compact OM1200 appliance. The OM1200 product family is designed for secure edge deployments and is used in combination with Lighthouse Software. Combining the secure access of Smart Out of Band with the flexibility of automation tools, it provides the needed presence and proximity at every location to support emerging requirements in network management and automation. Finally, the team connected their software-controlled switches, firewalls, and reversed proxies to Opengear’s Operations Managers to ensure uninterrupted connectivity to their infrastructure.

Results

Roman reported that the Network Resilience Platform Opengear provided has significantly enhanced the quality of Hardis Group’s infrastructure. It has allowed the team to carry out upgrades with ease; even upgrades conducted during off-business hours, weekends, and holidays are less risky with Opengear, he said. Avoiding service interruptions during upgrades is crucial for Hardis, since the company may be subject to tens of thousands of Euros in fines if they don’t deliver on SLAs. Roman further explained that Opengear allows the team to easily access critical network devices in case of any issue, troubleshoot problems, and accelerate the resolution process.

Following the modernization of their network and the implementation of an out-of-band solution, the team can now mitigate any unplanned outages faster, meet their SLAs, and most importantly, help customers keep their businesses running smoothly.

As Hardis Group continues to grow and invest in its network, the team is considering opening additional data centers. Roman stated that they will choose Opengear once again as their Smart Out of Band solution due to its reliability, security, and ease of deployment.